weekend whimsy

I am really enjoying Wednesday wordplay so I thought I might add another regular post where I share some of my favourite poems. Like wordplay I don’t plan to analyse the poems too much, just present them and let them speak to you.

So in my continuing love affair with alliteration (and it seems the letter w) I introduce “weekend whimsy”, a little poetry to start your weekend.

I first discovered Walt Whitman in the viewing of Dead Poet’s Society and I can not read this without hearing Robin Williams voice, but that movie was released 25 years ago, and I was just a teenager when I first heard those words. For some reason the poem came back to me again this week, and it seems to have something different to say to me at almost 40.

O Me! O Life!

BY WALT WHITMAN

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Source: Leaves of Grass (1892)

Do you have poems you love that have spoken to you differently at different stages of your life?